State Police Managers Can Vote To Unionize

The state labor board has cleared the way for state police lieutenants and captains to form a union, an unprecedented move for managers within the agency, according to a decision released last week.

State police managers will vote by secret ballot from July 5 to July 19 whether to unionize. In February, the majority of the department's 44 captains and lieutenants signed a letter of intent to unionize, citing concerns about pay, morale and poor planning within the agency.

Lt. Edward Gould, a spokesman for state police managers, said he believes that they will vote to unionize.

``The biggest concern is a pay situation that has been going on for years that is unfair,'' Gould said. ``We think the only way we can get relief is to organize.''

He said that some sergeants and master sergeants earn more than lieutenants for their normal salaries, not including overtime, because of the flawed pay structure.

``There are other personnel issues that we think collective bargaining would help us address,'' Gould said.

Gould said managerial representatives have met with Public Safety Commissioner Leonard C. Boyle and Col. Edward Lynch, commander of the state police, to express their concerns, but to no avail. Boyle had met with the state Office of Policy and Management to address the issue, but was unable to address pay scales because of budgetary concerns.

``OPM has determined that because management pay compression is an issue that affects all state agencies, it will not address the issue on an agency-by-agency basis,'' Boyle said in a statement in February. ``This is not a matter that any individual commissioner can independently rectify.''

Boyle declined to comment on the issue Friday except to say ``it's an ongoing labor matter.''

The state had tried to block the move to unionize before the labor board, arguing that the petition for the union be dismissed for captains because that position has been excluded since the beginning of collective bargaining.

The state also claimed that both captains and lieutenants meet the criteria for exclusion from collective bargaining because they are ``managerial employees.''

But Assistant Agent Kenneth A. Hampton of the labor board disagreed with those claims and recommended on June 8 that the vote be held to allow captains and lieutenants to unionize under the Connecticut State Employees Association. On June 13, the labor board issued an order that an election be held.

Using an earlier decision that allowed lieutenants and captains from the correction department to unionize, the labor board said those supervisors within the state police do not meet all the criteria of managers, partially because they ``may not resolve grievances nor issue discipline independently.''

The managers would have a separate union from the rank-and-file troopers, and will not affect that union, which has been in existence since 1981, said union President David LeBlanc.

``I don't think it will affect our union members at all,'' LeBlanc said. ``Unionizing will allow them to have more control over their future because they have some issues with pay and working conditions.''